Gloriana

THE FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

The Countess of Scaith drew both her shutters back and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. She sniffed at her violets. From this bedroom window she looked across lawns and sprouting gardens to the ornamental lake which, this morning, had begun to lose the untidy sheen of winter. There were gardeners and the like about, trimming and twitching. The spring, when it came, thought Una with sudden melancholy, would be unwelcome. Behind her, in the curtained bed, Gloriana still slept. She had come here, weeping, at night, for comfort. In black damasked silk Una headed for the bell rope, understanding that the Queen must soon awake. But she hesitated, arms folded, to stare down at her friend, who seemed at peace. Gloriana’s huge beauty filled the bed; her marvellous auburn hair lay all around her head and shoulders in great skeins and her fair, high-boned, innocent face, half-turned from the light admitted through the curtain’s gap, showed a degree of childish wistfulness which brought tears to Una’s eyes and made her pull the curtains tight, considering a means of distracting the Queen, for a few hours at least, and making her a girl again.

For some while Una had wanted (selfishly, she thought) to show Gloriana what she had discovered about the nature of the palace. She had hesitated for several reasons: Gloriana’s time was rarely her own; Gloriana preferred to spend as long as possible in private company with Una; Gloriana carried so many concerns with her, regarding the palace, the city and the Realm, that further knowledge might increase her anxieties. And yet, thought Una, she could offer Gloriana compensation for all this, for what she would offer would be a shared secret, clear of State and politics-some private knowledge-potential, if temporary, escape. Though she could think of no appointments for today, Una continued to hesitate, impatient of Responsibility which hovered all around; yet trapped, unable to dismiss it, and in this she was almost as burdened as the Queen. She knew, too, that the bright, sharp thoughts of morning, when one was still allowed to dream unchallenged, might soon be muddied by the myriad considerations of commitment to lazily made promises and thoughtless assurances, not to mention established ritual and routine, of previous, more hectic moments. To wake Gloriana now, with breathless predictions of adventure and freedom, might serve to create a greater melancholy when the realisation of the day’s prepared events occurred. Una decided that she would wait-test her friend’s heart and discover both her public and her temperamental desires.

And so she moved from the room and its velvet-shielded bed, into the next. She moved in glinting black silk, like a supernatural being-half shadow, half silver fire-to the little bed-chamber of her maidservant, and entered without warning, as was her habit, to find Elizabeth Moffett already dressed, in good plain linen, and brushing out her hair.

“Morning, your ladyship.” Elizabeth Moffett was uninhibited by the presence of her mistress. Her face grew a little red, from the effort of the brushing. Her square, wholesome features were typical of her Northern home. All Una’s servants were from the North, for she was inclined to mistrust Southerners as muddle-headed and careless in their duties; an inherited prejudice which she knew to be unfair but which she preferred to follow in the hiring of personal staff. Una loved Elizabeth for her unimaginative relish of commonplace life.

“Good morning, Elizabeth. I have a visitor. Would you please have breakfast for two prepared and ensure we are not disturbed.”

“Ho, ho, ho.” Elizabeth Moffett winked at the Countess. Her interpretations of Una’s life were always direct and never subtle.

Una smiled and returned, rustling, to her own room, where Gloriana could be heard awakening.

The bed curtains parted and through them appeared the tangled head of the World’s Ideal, shame-faced. “Oh, Una!”

The Countess of Scaith was at the window again, watching a carthorse, which drew a cargo of seedlings, cropping, unknown to the gardener, at some recently planted privet.

“Your Majesty?” Una’s expression was gently sardonic and it made Gloriana laugh, as Una had known it must.

“Una! What’s the hour?”

“Early enough. There’s time to break your fast. What must you do today?”

“Today? But you know better than I. Tell me.”

“There are no commitments until noon, when we dine with the ambassador from Lyonne and that wife.”

“Ah, me!” Gloriana’s head disappeared. Her muffled voice continued. “But we’re free till then, eh?”

“Free,” said Una, and dared herself to add: “For exploration. Just we two. If Your Majesty is of a mind…”

“What?” The head reappeared, eyes wide. “What?”

“I have a discovery I would share. The palace is ancient, as you know.”

“As ancient as Albion, some think. Founded when New Troy was founded.”

“Aye. Old roofs are said to lie below the ground now.”

“So scholars speculate. What’s this, Una? You have discovered an antique vault?”

“More. The secret passages-”

“No secrets, those. I dared them all, as a girl. They lead nowhere, most of them, save to blank walls.”

“What’s beyond those blank walls?”

“Eh? Montfallcon would know, if that were true. It’s his business.”

“If Montfallcon knows, he refuses to speak of them. I’ve sounded him. He’s vague. Perhaps by decision. He allows the surface, accepts the possibility of certain depths, but no more.”

“That is his temperament, I think.”

“Aye. Well, then, we have a secret which Montfallcon will not share-whatever his reasoning.”

“Oh, I should love such a secret!” Gloriana flung away the curtains and was on bare feet, in crumpled, musty white, to lift her friend almost bodily from the ground in her strong, enthusiastic arms. “Una! Escape!”

“Of sorts. Without anyone knowing where we go. I found the entrance shortly upon my return from Scaith. It leads to subterranean parts, full of old relics, rich with hints of a past our histories scarcely mention.”

“We can visit those tunnels? You’ll lead me?”

“If you’re for it. We should dress in some rough disguise, I think. It would add to the excitement.”

“Indeed. We’ll go as young men. In those costumes of ours.”

“I thought the same. With swords and poignards and feathered bonnets.”

“Boots and leathern doublets. Aye. Now?”

“We have the moment.”

“We’ll seize it, then!” Gloriana kissed her friend upon the lips. “And then, when we’ve explored, we can tell a few companions. John Dee? What do you say? Wheldrake?”

“It might be best to make all this our own. No sharing. I’ll show you why.”

“You have our clothes, Una?”

“Where they always are. In the trunk.”

“And lanterns? Shall we need lanterns?”

“We shall.”

Gloriana frowned. “What if there’s danger? Broken steps, hidden pits, quaking roofs?”

“We’ll avoid them. I’ve already travelled the paths. I’ll lead you.” Una knew the Queen did not refer to her own danger but to her responsibilities as the Realm’s cornerstone.

“Shall we find demons, Una?”

Glad of Gloriana’s elation, anxious to maintain it by any means, Una cried: “Only those we can vanquish with glaive and valour, because our hearts are virtuous!”

“Where’s the entrance?” Gloriana was opening the trunk and dragging out the disguises they had used some while before, when they had conceived the notion of courting maids together.

“Here.” Una pointed at the far wall. “In the next room. A deep closet I’d scarcely used. It leads into a passage I knew was there. A few steps, then down to a blocked door which once led outside. There are many like it.”

“Aye. Hern’s Court created the fashion. But that’s not all, of course. Go on.”

“I found the wall behind the steps hollow. The bricks moved. I made a hole. And there it was!” Una tugged on loose britches and buckled them up. She pulled a linen shirt over her naked chest and pointed it, fluffing at the lace on collar and cuffs before drawing the peasecod doublet round her body and buttoning it from navel to throat. Stockings and shoes, a scarlet slouch hat with a blue ostrich plume, and she was ready to sling the belt, with sword and dirk, about her waist. Gloriana rolled up her hair, which was much longer than Una’s, and fitted it under a tighter cap, also feathered. She wore a short cape on one shoulder and her doublet was of brown padded velvet, but she resembled Una in essence. They stood, right hands on hips, left on hilts, and laughed at one another-two gallants of the Town, poor younger sons, ready for any escapade.

“Breakfast first,” said Una, always the leader when they were dressed thus. “And we must take one of those portable clocks of Master Tolcharde’s, so that we know when to return. The pocket watch?” She found it, wound it and placed it in her purse. Its loud tick sounded against her thigh. She swaggered to the door, opened it a fraction. Elizabeth Moffett had done as asked and porridge, herrings and bread were ready on a crystal table which had been brought back as booty from some forgotten West Indian campaign.

The eating done, Una took them to the closet, sliding back a squeaking panel, lifting her lantern to show the steps and, in the wall immediately to her left, a newly made hole. “Here,” she said. “I thought of it when I noticed that cold air came from a vent in one of my rooms downstairs-in what I had always considered solid stone. I discovered that there is an entire passage-too small for upright movement-which passes that room, which can be seen into in turn. If I wished, I could spy upon myself! But that’s not of much interest. Here.” She helped tall Gloriana through the gap. There were more steps, twin to the others, leading down.

The lantern light was almost too bright in the narrow chilly corridor. They whispered, yet their voices were amplified, as the light seemed to be amplified, at paradox with their confines, and oddly comforting. Dust in their nostrils brought unspecific nostalgia. They were both children now, holding hands and pressing on. A rat went by. They tipped their hats to him as he fled. Spiders were studied, patches of moss found to resemble the faces of certain courtiers. Their spirits rose so as to border on ecstasy while the tunnel turned, dropped, climbed, leading them away from Dignity and Charity and Grace and the other sober demands of office, until they entered a high gallery, all intricate, barbaric carving, with ancient beams supporting a ceiling of panelled wood, and the lanterns cast shadows, displayed inhuman faces and peculiar representations of animal forms, yet still they giggled, but more quietly, as if they feared to offend these ancestral monuments. Even when something moved, a larger shadow, not their own, they felt no anxiety, though they could not identify the source. They found grimy paintings and rubbed them clean to exclaim upon the unsuspected skills of ancient craftsmen. They seated themselves in dusty chairs and wondered how many hundreds of years they had waited here to be used again. They pretended to find human remains-sticks; fallen, rotted woodwork; rusting weapons; the bones of cats or rats-which hinted at epic murder from Albion’s legends. They investigated little rooms which still contained narrow beds and benches, lengths of chain and manacles, as if prisoners had slept and worked here-perhaps those who had carved the gallery which lay behind them. They descended pitted stone and heard water but never saw it. They found wax, so fresh-seeming it might have fallen from a candle an hour or so since. They found scraps of food, doubtless borne here by the ubiquitous rats. They heard movements everywhere and guessed these came from the inhabited palace, unseen on the other side of several walls. It was strange to be so close to activity without being able to see or even to identify the source of movements. They heard voices, laughter, cries, the rattle of implements, footfalls-fragments of sound, sometimes quite loud, sometimes very faint, as if space itself possessed different qualities within the walls. They were haunted by the living.

Una led Queen Gloriana up a further, twisting flight and crawled along a little tunnel, cautioning her to silence, until suddenly there was dappled light ahead of them, with its source on their right, from the wall. Una turned with difficulty and crawled backwards so that, head to head, they could both look through the lattice at the room below.

Gloriana’s astonishment gave Una considerable satisfaction. They could see Doctor Dee himself, pacing the length of a room half-full of curling parchments, of simple furniture, scientific glasses, instruments of brass and polished hardwood, untidy shelves and cupboards, crystals, mirrors, geographical globes, orreries, phials containing richly coloured liquids and powders, all the paraphernalia and stimuli for his myriad intellectual investigations.

He wore a loose robe, nothing else, and as he paced it opened to reveal his firm flesh, grizzled hair and, to their shared astonishment, his disproportionately large private parts, which he fingered absently all the while, as if to aid his concentration. Queen Gloriana bit her lip and shook with amusement, then became ashamed, tugging at Una to come away.

Una, however, crawled further back, to another square of light, and Gloriana was tempted to follow. Here they could see into John Dee’s bedchamber. It was as littered with charts and books and pieces of alchemical apparatus as the other room. Only the bed, draped with black curtains bearing a variety of mystical and astrological symbols as befitted the couch of a follower of Prometheus, was free of paper. Gloriana frowned a question, but Una’s hand begged her to be patient and to continue looking. Very soon Doctor Dee paced in, his robe sailing back from his bare body, his manhood now much huger in his sensitive hand. Gloriana gasped.

“Oh,” they heard him groan, “if only there were an antidote for love. This exquisite poison! It fills my being. Some philtre which robbed the body of lust but left the mind clear. There is none. To dampen such desires is to extinguish the higher investigations of the brain. I must have both! I must have both! Ah, madam! Madam!”

Gloriana creased an unbelieving brow.

He drew the curtains of the bed gently and it seemed that there lay in shadow a figure, tall and giving off a very faint lustre, as a putrefying corpse might shine. They saw John Dee begin to stroke the object. He murmured to it. He lay down beside it and he flung his arms around it, flung a leg across it-twitch. “Oh, my beauty! Oh, my love. Soon your loins shall live-and throb to my pounding dork! Ah! Ah!”

Gloriana pulled at Una, retreating.

Eventually they stood upright upon the stair, their lanterns held loosely in their hands. Gloriana was leaning heavily against the wall, her mouth hanging open. “Una!”

“It shows us a mortal sage, eh?”

“We should not have watched! That thing he has-what is it? Is he in love with a dead creature? Is it human or animal? Or a demon, even? Perhaps it is a demon, Una. Or a corpse, waiting for the demon to inhabit it.” The rustle and murmur from the walls had begun to disturb her now. “Does my Dee dabble in necromancy?”

“Not at all.” Una began to lead the way down the stair. “That thing’s probably no more than a wax effigy of someone. No one. He loves you, Your Majesty, don’t you see?”

“I thought so. But then I denied it.”

“I’ve spied on him before. He speaks of you constantly. He is in a fever of wanting you.”

“But he has never hinted…”

“He cannot. He loves you. He fears-well, many things. He fears you will laugh at him. That you will be shocked by him. That you will become afraid of him. He is constantly in a quandary. And, it appears, he is incapable of satisfying himself with any other woman.”

“He seemed confident with that…”

“He pretended it was you.”

Gloriana began to smile broadly. “Oh, poor Dee. Should I-?”

“It would be poor politics, Your Majesty.”

“But excellent sport. And it would make him happy. After all, he has given so much to me and done so much for the Realm. He should be rewarded. There are few who could understand his pain as I understand it.”

“He does not suffer as you suffer.”

“To a degree, Una.”

“But not to the same degree. Be cautious, Your Majesty. Montfallcon…”

“You think it would be destructive. And so it would. It’s four years since I entertained a courtier. They grow ambitious, or melancholy, or wild, then strange humours fill the palace. There are jealousies.”

“And expenses,” said the Countess of Scaith. “You have had to marry so many of them off, bestow estates. Your kindness to those who have loved you…”

“My guilt.” Gloriana nodded to agree with Una. “But you’re right, dear heart. Dee must burn on and I must do my best to continue to treat him as I have always treated him.”

“You still maintain respect, surely.”

“Of course. But it will be harder to milk humour from him, knowing his pain, by setting Montfallcon off against him, as I love to do. It’s poor sport for me and none at all for Dee.”

They crossed a low-ceilinged room and found a broken door through which to enter the tunnel they had left, but, as they stooped, torchlight flared from another door, to their right, and they turned, straightening, afraid.

A small man peered from beneath his upraised hand. He seemed to have a humpback or some other growth upon his shoulder. He wore a leather jerkin and britches and a dark shirt, its collar folded at the neck. He had large eyes and a wide mouth, giving him something of the appearance of an intelligent frog. They raised their own lanterns, assuming the poses suitable to their disguise.

“What’s this?” Una, lounging on the wall, was arrogant. “The dungeon keeper, left behind?”

She saw now that the man’s shoulder carried a small black-and-white cat which sat very straight and still and looked at her with yellow, candid eyes.

“What’s this?” echoed Jephraim Tallow, mocking her. “Two play-actors who’ve lost their way?”

“We’re gentlemen, sir,” said Gloriana boldly. “And might resent your insult.”

Tallow opened his huge mouth and laughed. Una believed in her heart that she and the Queen had been recognised, but such thoughts were scarcely logical here. She stepped forward. “We’re exploring these tunnels on Lord Montfallcon’s business. Looking for traitors, renegades, vagabonds.”

“Aha. Well, you’ve caught one, gentlemen.” Tallow’s smile was insinuating. “Or two, if you like. Me and Tom. Vagabonds the pair of us. Confirmed rogues. Scavengers. But not traitors, nor are we renegades, for we serve no one and therefore can turn against no one. We live on our own account, Tom and myself.” He bowed. The cat clung on. “You’ll see I’m swordless, sir, so cannot offer you the duel you desire.”

“I spoke hastily.” In return Una made a short bow. “We were startled by your sudden appearance here.”

“And I by yours.” Tallow found a stone bench in the darkness and seated himself, crossing arms and legs and staring up at them. “Well?”

“You know these passages, then?”

“They’re my home for the moment. Until I grow tired of them and move on. But I’ve a poor understanding of the real world, which is why I prefer to be separated from it, as one is, of necessity, here. Though I’m fascinated by it, also. This is the ideal habitat for a fellow of my persuasion. And you are Lord Montfallcon’s men, eh? On the Queen’s business, then?”

“Indeed,” said Gloriana with an irony Una felt was dangerously obvious.

“I guessed you to be some of the large palace beasts at first,” said Tallow. Una suspected this remark to be pointed failure to sense Gloriana’s meaning.

“Beasts?” said the Queen.

“They hibernate in the winter. A few of them are beginning to rouse. Creatures of all sorts. They make life dangerous for the rest of us. Now, tell me the truth, gentlemen. Montfallcon will have no one in the walls. It does not suit him. You are escaped from some imprisonment, or threat of it, and seeking a hiding place, I’d guess.”

“Montfallcon knows…?” Gloriana hesitated.

“Of the darker places of the palace? Oh, aye. Some of ’em, at least. But Tallow knows ’em all. Shall we be friends? You’ll have me for your guide.”

“Aye,” said Gloriana, rather too readily in Una’s opinion. “Friends it is-and a guide, Master Tallow.”

“These rooms go down deeper and deeper,” Tallow told them. “To natural caverns where blind, white beasts blunder and devour one another. To halls so ancient they were hewn from living rock before the first Golden Age. To strange cloisters inhabited by dwarfish men who were here before true men walked the Earth. All this lies below the palace which lies below the palace. These haunts are modern in comparison, a few hundred years old. The true antiquity is so alien to us that it plays tricks upon our minds should we merely be witness to it. And yet, I know, there are those who dwell there, no longer sane, in our eyes, though eminently sane in their own-men and women, once. They breed, some of them, I think.”

Una lifted her shoulders back. “You seek to frighten us, Master Tallow?”

“No, gentlemen. I receive no relish from alarming others. I speak of it as a curiosity, that’s all.” He reached up and stroked his cat. “It’s cold here.”

“Aye,” came Gloriana’s small voice.

“I’ll take you to the warmer parts,” Tallow said. “Come. You can meet a few of your fellow exiles-those who have no objection to being met, that is. Most of the folk who dwell here are inclined to be reclusive. It is why they choose to live between the walls.”

“How many?” Gloriana whispered.

“I’ve never counted ’em, sir. A hundred or two, maybe. We live, most of us, by scavenging. And there’s superstitious servants to rely upon, too. Those who think us devils or faeries and put out tidbits for us. But they misjudge our size. A strapping fellow like you, sir, needs meat every day to maintain such a huge frame. You have an unusual figure, sir.” Tallow spoke casually as he led them on. “There’s only one other I know who possesses such size.”

“We’d best return,” said Una urgently. She stopped in her tracks, taking Gloriana by the arm. “No time for further exploration now.”

But Gloriana had shaken her off and advanced. Una was forced to follow.

The passage widened, opening upon a very large hall, like a covered market. Flickering torches illuminated the place and an unruly fire burned in a grate at one end, while around the walls, in changing flame-cast shadows, as nomads might camp, small tents or groups of tents: tiny territories marked out by means of ropes, or rubble, or pieces of half-rotten furniture, or blocks of stone torn from the very foundations of the hall. And white faces stared from shawls and hoods and hollows: thin faces, for the most part, with large eyes, as if already these people adapted to the glooms: another race.

Gloriana stopped dead when she saw the scene and was bumped against by Una, who, lost in her own rapid thoughts, noticed it a few seconds later.

“Who are these?” the Queen whispered.

A great figure had risen from beside the fire and stood in silhouette, pausing as if to confront the newcomers. Then it had dashed into deeper darkness and was gone.

Una, full of dread, gripped the Queen’s arm. “No,” she implored. “We must return.”

Tallow was amused. “She is shy, the mad woman. Of all of us. But you shouldn’t fear her.”

There was no curiosity in the faces of this lost gathering, and Tallow greeted none of them. It seemed that he did not regard himself as part of the tribe. He displayed it with a distant, proprietorial air, in his self-chosen role as their guide. “There are gentlemen here, like yourselves. And well-born ladies. Most, of course, claim to be a little nobler than they actually were. But why should they not? Here they create themselves and their surroundings afresh. It is all they have.”

But Gloriana had at last broken free from the fascination and, in obedience to Una’s terror, was in retreat.

Tallow called out from behind them. They ignored him. They ran through the passages, back to where they had first encountered the little man. They climbed and scrambled up passages and flights of steps, half afraid that they were lost, though the way was familiar: through the carven gallery, which now seemed to threaten, and along the narrow corridors to Una’s rooms, to squeeze through the panel, and slam it shut.

Gloriana was paler than the nomads of the walls. She leaned, in dusty gallant’s guise, panting against the wall. She attempted to speak, but failed. Una said to her: “It must be forgotten. Oh, Your Majesty, I have been so foolish! It must be forgotten.”

Queen Gloriana stood upright. She recalled the great silhouette in the hall and her head filled with terror again. Her face was without expression. Tears ran from her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “It must be forgotten.”